Grace Means found the perfect wedding dress on sale at David’s Bridal — but something didn’t feel right.
“It was absolutely beautiful, but a month or two later, I started having second thoughts,” Means tells . “I was like, ‘No, Grace. Your dress is perfect. Don’t be that bride.’”
On a whim, Means decided to try on her mom’s wedding dress, which was hanging in her childhood closet.
Means gasped when she glimpsed her reflection in the mirror.
“It fit me like a glove — no alterations needed,” Means wrote on Instagram.
“I took it as a sign from God,” Means tells TODAY. “I was like, ‘This is how I am going to honor her.’”
Her father had no idea she was going to wear her late mother’s gown for her wedding in September. His emotional reaction has captured hearts on social media.
“Is that mom’s dress?” Chad Mixon, who is sobbing, asks his daughter in a now-viral Instagram video. Mixon, 48, is so overwhelmed that he can barely catch his breath.
“You look just like her,” he says, his voice cracking.
Mixon and his wife, Carly Barnett Mixon, were married nearly 25 years when she passed away unexpectedly in 2022.
“I tried to hold everything back, but as soon as I turned around and saw the dress, that lump in my throat was instant, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold anything back,” Mixon tells TODAY.com. “She looked so beautiful.”
Though Carly Mixon died two years before Means tied the knot, she had seen her daughter in the dress years ago. In fact, she took photos and posted them on her Facebook.
“One summer we were at my Mimi and Poppy’s house and my mom was like, ‘Put on my wedding dress and I”ll take pictures,’ and it was so much fun because everything with my mom was fun,” Means recalls. “When I tried on the dress for my wedding, all those memories came flooding back and it was like she was with me.”
“My mom was my absolute best friend,” Means says.
Means, a newlywed, aspires to have a marriage like her parents.
“They had a true love and I am so thankful that that was modeled for me,” she says. “They had a bond like no other.”
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